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SPEECH 



OF 



PARSON BROWNLOW; 

OF TENNESSEE, 

AGAINST THE GREAT REBELLION, 

DELIVERED AT NEW YORK, MAY 15, 1862. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : I take occa- 
sion, in advance of anything and all I may s^ay, 
to apprize you of what you will all have dis- 
covered before I take my seat — that is to say, 
in my public addresses, no matter what my 
theme may be, I do not present it to an audi- 
ence with an eloquence that charms, or with 
that beauty of diction which captivates, fasci- 
nates and charms. This, I may be allowed to 
say, I most sincerely regret, because there is 
no power on earth — there is no power so great 
and of such influence upon the human mind 
as the power and influence of oratory, finished 
and high wrought. Ctesar controlled men by 
exciting their fears ; Cicero by captivating their 
affections. The one perished with its author ; 
the other has continued throughout all time, 
and, with public speakers, will continue to the 
end of time. But there is one thing I am con- 
fident of this evening, and that is, I address au 
appreciative audience, an assemblage who 
have congregated on this occasion to hear some 
facts in reference to the great rebellion South — 
the gigantic conspiracy of the nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and I shall therefore look more to what 
I shall say than to the manner of saying it — 
more, if you please, to the subject-matter of 
what I shall say than to any studied effort at 
display or beauty and force of language. I will 
be allowed by you an additional remark or two 
personal in their nature to myself. For the last 
thirty-five years of my somewhat eventful life, 
I have been accustomed to speak in public up- 
on all the subjects afloat in the land, for I have 
never been neutral on any subject that ever 
came up in that time. [Laughter and applause.] 
Independent in all things, aud under all cir- 
cumstances, I have never been entirely neutral, 

♦Delivered in reply to an invitation to address the people 
of New York. In his acceptance of the invitation, Parson 
Brownlow says : 

"If the South, in her madness and folly, will force the 
issue upon the country of slavery and no Union, or a Union 
and no slavery, I am for the Union, though every other in- 
stitution in the country perish. I am for sustaining this 
Union, if it shall require 'coercion' or 'subjugation,' or 
what is more, the annihilation oi the rebel population of the 
land." 



but have always taken a hand in what was 
afloat. About three years ago my voice entirely 
failed from a stubborn attack of bronchitis, 
and for two years of that time I was unable to 
speak above a whisper. During that period I 
performed a pilgrimage to New York and had 
an operation performed upon my throat, and 
was otherwise treated by an eminent physician 
of this city, who greatly benefited me, and who, 
when I parted with him, enjoined it upon me 
to go home and occasionally exercise my speak- 
ing machinery, and if I could do no better, to 
retire to the grove or village of the town where 
I live, and to make short speeches, to declaim 
upon stumps or logs, as the case might be. In- 
stead of doing so, however, in the town in 
which I live I frequently addressed a temper- 
ance organization in favor of to^al abstinence ; 
and you all know that is a good cause. ["Good I" 
and applause.] At other times, as a regular 
ordained licensed Methodist preacher, I tried 
to tell short sermons to the audience. That is 
a good cause, you admit. [Applause.] And 
yet, both together failed to restore my voice — 
[laughter] — and when I left home for the 
North, by way of Cincinnati, I had no in- 
tention or expectation of making a speech ; but 
as soon as I opened my batteries in Pike's Op- 
era House, in Cincinnati, against this infinite- 
ly infernal rebellion, I found myself able to 
speak and to be heard half a mile. [Great 
laughter.] I attribute the partial restoration 
of my voice to the goodness, the glory and the 
Godlike cause in which I profess to be en- 
gaged — that of vindicating the Union. [Ap- 
plause.] 

We are, ladies and gentlemen, in the midst 
of a revolution, and a most fearful one, as you 
all know it is. I shall, in the remarks I may 
make here, advance no sentiment, no idea, I 
shall employ no language, that I have not ad- 
vanced and employed time and again at home, 
away down in Dixie. ['' Good I" and applause.] 
I should despise myself, aud merit the scorn 
and contempt of every lady and gentleman un- 
der the sound of my voice, if I were to come 






here with one set of principles and opinions for 
the North, and another set for the South when 
I am there. [Applause.] 1 will utter no de- 
nunciation of the wretched, the corrupt, and 
the infamous men who inaugurated this revo- 
lution South here, that I would not utter in their 
hearing on the street where I reside. I there- 
fore say to you, in the outset of the remarks I 
purpose to make, what I have time and again 
said through the columns of the most widely 
circulated papertheyhad in the South — a paper, 
by the way, they suppressed and crushed out 
on the 25th of October last — the last Union 
journal that floated over any portion of the 
Southern confederacy, aud to this good hour 
the last and the only religious journal in the 
eleven seceded States. [Applause.] I say, 
then, to you, as I have said time and again, 
that the people of the South, the demagogues 
and, leaders of the South, are to blame for hav- 
ing hrouglit about this state of things, and not 
the people of the North. [Cheers] They have 
intended down South for thirty years to break 
up this Government. It has been our settled 
purpose and our sole aim down South to de- 
stroy the Union and break up the Government. 
We have had the Presidency in the South twice 
to your once, and five of our men were reelected 
to the Presidency, filling a period of forty 
years. In addition to that we had divers men 
elected for one term, aud no man at the North 
ever was permitted to serve any but the one 
term ; and in addition to having elected our men 
twice to your once, and occupied the chair 
twice as long as you ever did, we seized upon 
aud appropriated two or three miscreants from 
the North that we elected to the Presidency, 
and ploughed with them as our heifers. — 
[Great laughter and applause.] We asked of 
you and obtained at your hands a fugitive 
slave 'aw. Yon voted for and helped us to en- 
act and to establish it. We asked of you and 
obtained the repeal of the Missouri compromise 
line, which never ought to have been repealed. 
I fought it to the bitter end, and denounced it 
aud all concerned in repealing it, and I repeat 
it here again to-night. We asked and obtained 
the admission of Texas into the Union, that we 
might have slave territory enough to form some 
four or five more great States, and you granted 
it. you have granted as from first to last all 
we have afekt d, all we have desired ; and hence 
I repeat that this thing of secession, this wicked 
mpl to dissolve the Union, has been brought. 
about without the shadow of a cause. It is the 
work of the worst men thai ever God permitted 
to live on the face i I' this earth. | Applause.] 
It is the work of a set of men down South who, 
in winding up this revolution, if dot Adminis 
(ration and Government shall fail to hang them 

as high as Hainan — hang every one ol them 
we will make an utter failure. I have confi- 
dence myself, and, thank God, I have always 
had faith and confidence, in the Government 



crushing out this rebellion. [Applause.] We 
have the men at the head of affairs who will do 
it — [cheers] — and that gallant and glorious 
man McClellan — [enthusiastic cheering] — a 
man in whose ability and integrity I have all 
the time had confidence, and prophesied he 
would come right side up. [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] My own distracted and oppressed 
section of the country, East Tennessee, falls 
now by the new arrangement into the military 
district of that hero, Fremont. [Cheers and 
loud applause.] We rejoiced in Tennessee 
when we heard that we had fallen into his di- 
vision, [applause,] and although I have al- 
ways differed with him in politics, yet, in a 
word, he is my sort of man. He will either 
make a spoon or spoil a horn, [great laughter.] 
in the attempt. When he gets ready to go 
down into East Tennessee I hope he will let 
me know. I want to go with him side by side, 
on a horse ; and our friend Briggs, of New 
York, a former member of Congress, who is 
now on the platform, has promised me a large 
coil of rope, and I want the pleasure of showing 
them who to hang. [Great applause.] 

We have had experiments in this thing of 
crushing out rebellion. We had a long time 
ago one on a small scale in Massachusetts, and 
the Government crushed it out. Afterwards 
we had the whiskey rebellion in the neigbor- 
ing State of Pennsylvania, and the Govern- 
ment applied the screws and crushed it out. 
Still more recently we had a terrible rebellion 
in South Carolina, and, with Old Hickory at 
the helm, we crushed it out. [Applause.] And 
if my prayers and tears could have resurrected 
the Old Hero two years ago — though I never 
supported him in my life — and placed him in 
the chair, disgraced and occupied by that mis- 
erable mockery of a man from Wheatland, we 
would have had this rebellion crushed out; for, 
let General Jackson have been in politics what 
he was — I knew him well — he was a true pa- 
triot and a sincere lover of'his country. ['"heers.J 
When Floyd commenced stealing muskets and 
other implements of war, and his associates 
commenced plotting treason, had Old Hickory 
been President, rising about ten feet in his 
boots, and taking Floyd by the collar, he would 
have sworn by the God that made Moses, this 
thing must stop. [Great laughter and applause.] 
And when Andrew Jackson swore that a thing 
had to stop, it had to stop. [Laughter.) More 
recently still, we had a rebellion in the neigh- 
boring State of Rhode Island, known as the 
Dorr 'rebellion; and the Government very 
efficiently and very properly put it down. But 
the great conspiracy of ihe nineteenth century 
and the great rebellion of the age is now on 
hand, and i believe that Abe Lincoln, with the 
people to back him, will crush it out. [Cheers 
and applar.se.] It will be done, it must be done, 
and it shall be done. [Great cheering.] And, 
having done that thing, gentlemen and ladies, 



£) J4 



if they will give us a few weeks' rest to recruit, 
we will lick England and France both, if they 
wish it. [Loud applause.] And I am not 
certain but we will have to do it — particularly 
old England. [Great laughter.] She has been 
playing a two-fisted game, and she was well 
represented by Russell, for he carried water 
on both shoulders. I don't like the tone of her 
journals ; and when this war is finished we shall 
have four or five hundred thousand well drilled 
soldiers, inured to the hardships of war, under 
the lead of experienced officers, and then we 
shall be ready for the rest of the world and the 
balance of mankind. 

When the rebellion first opened — something 
like twelve months ago — I saw, as every ob- 
serving man could see, where we were driving 
to, and what would be the state of things in a 
very short time. In the inauguration of the 
rebellion I took sides with the Union and with 
the Stars and Stripes of my counfry. How 
could it be otherwise ? I had traveled the cir 
cuit as a Methodist preacher in the State of 
South Carolina in 1832, in Pickens and An- 
derson counties [Anderson county being the 
one where John C. Calhoun lived,] and I fought 
with all the ability I possessed, and all the en- 
ergy I could muster, the heresy of nullification 
then. I even prepared a pamphlet in South 
Carolina, of seventy pages, backing up and sus 
taining Old Hickory and denouncing the nul 
lifiers — and they threatened to hang me then. 
I have been a Union mau all my life. [Ap- 
plause.] I have never been a sectional man. 
I commenced my political career in Tennessee 
iu the memorable year of 1828, and I was oue, 
thank God, of the corporal's guard who got up 
the electoral ticket for John Qaincy Adams 
against Andrew Jackson. Iu the next contest 
I was for Clay. [Great cheering.] You and 
I and all of us cheer and applaud the mention 
of the name of Henry Clay. I purpose to move, 
when this rebellion is over, that we shall hold 
a National Convention, and I will put in nom- 
ination for the Presidency the last suit of 
clothes that Clay wore before his death. [Great 
laughter and applause.] When the rebellion 
fairly opened, they saw the course my paper 
was taking, and they approached me, as they 
did every other editor of a Union paper in the 
country, with mouey. They knew I was poor, and 
they supposed it would have the same influence 
over me that it had over almost all the Union edi- 
tors of the South, for they bought up the last devil 
of them all throughout the South. [Laughter 
and cheers.] I told them as one did of old: 
Thy mouey perish with thee. I pursued the 
even tenor of my way until the stream rose 
higher and higher with secession fire, as red 
and hot as hell it3elf, aud commenced pouring 
along that great artery of travel, that great rail- 
road to Manassas, Yorktown, Richmond and 
Petersburg. Then it was, that, wanting in 
transportation, wanting in rolling stock, want 



ing in locomotives, they had to lie over by regi- 
ments in our town, and then they commenced 
to ride Union men upon rails. I have s 'en that 
done in the streets, and have seen them break 
into the stores and empty their contents ; and 
coming before my house with ropes in their 
hands, they would groan out, " Let us give old 
Brownlow a turn, the damned old scoundrel ; 
come out, aud we will hang you to the first 
limb." I would appear, sometimes, on the front 
portico of my house, and would address them 
in this way : " Men, what do you want with me?" 
for I was very select in my words. I took par- 
ticular pains to never say ''gentlemen." [Laugh- 
ter.] " M en > what do you want with me ?" 
" We want a speech from you ; we want you to 
come out for the Southern confederacy." To 
which I replied : "I have no speech to make to 
you. You know me as well as I know you ; I 
am utterly and irreconcilably opposed to this 
infernal rebellion in which you are engaged, 
and I shall fight it to the bitter end. I hope 
that if you are going iu to kill the Yankees in 
search of your rights, that you will get your 
rights before you get back." These threats 
towards me were repeated every day and every 
week, until finally they crushed out my paper, 
destroyed my office, appropriated the building 
to an old smith's shop to repair the locks and 
barrels of old muskets that Floyd had stolen 
from the Federal Government. They finally ■ 
enacted a law in the Legislature of Tennessee 
authoriziug an armed force to take all the arms, 
pistols, guns, dirks, swords, and everything of 
the sort, from all the Union men, and ihey paid 
a visit to every Uuion house in the State. 
They visited mine three times iu succession 
upon that business, and they got there a couple 
of guns and one pistol. Being an editor and 
preacher myself, 1 was not, largely supplied, and 
had the balance concealed under my bed clothes. 
[Great laughter.] 

Finally, after depriving us of all our arms 
throughout the State, and after taking all the 
fine horses of the Union men everywhere, with- 
out fee or reward, for cavalry horses, and seiz- 
ing upon the fat hogs, corn, fodder, aud sheep, 
going into houses and pulling the beds off the 
bedsteads in the day time, seizing upon all the 
blankets they could find for the army; after 
breaking open chests, bureaus, drawers, and 
everything of that sort — in which they were 
countenanced and tolerated by the authorities, 
civil and military — our people rose up iu re- 
bellion, unarmed as they were, and by acci- 
dent, I know it was, from Chattanooga to the 
Virginia line — a distauce of 300 miles — one 
S iturday night in November, at eleven o'clock, 
all the railroad bridges took fire at one time. 
[Cheers aud applause.] It was purely acci- 
dental. I happened to be out from home at 
the time. [Laughter.] I had really gone out 
on horseback — as they had suppressed my pa- 
per — to collect the fees which the clerks of the 



different counties were owing me, which tbey 
were ready and willing to pay me, knowing 
that I needed them to live upon ; and as these 
bridges took fire while I was out of town, they 
swore that I was the bell-wether and ringleader 
of all the devilment that was going on, and 
hence that I must have had a hand in it. They 
wanted a pretext to seize upon me, and upon 
the Gth day of December they marched me off 
to jail — a miserable, uncomfortable, damp, and 
desperate jail — where I found, when I was 
ushered into it, some 150 Union men ; and, as 
God is my judge, I say here to-night, there was 
not in the tchole jail a chair, bench, stool, or 
table, or any piece of furniture, except a dirty 
old wooden bucket and a pair of tin dippers to 
drink with. I found some of the first and best 
men of the whole country there. I knew them 
all, and they knew me, as I had been among 
them for thirty years. They rallied round me, 
some smiling and glad to see me, as I could 
give them the news that had been kept from 
them. Others took me by the hand and were ut- 
terly speechless, and, with bitter, burning tears 
running down their cheeks, they said that they 
never thought that they would come to that at 
last, looking through the bars of a grate. 
Speaking first to one and then another, I bade 
them be of good cheer and take good courage. 
Addressing them, I said, " is it for stealing you 
are here ? No. Is it for counterfeiting ? No. 
Is it for manslaughter ? No. You are here*, 
boys, because you adhere to the flag and the 
Constitution of our country. [Cheers.] I am 
here with you for no other offence but that ; 
and, as God is my judge, boys, I look upon this 
Gth day of December as the proudest day of 
my life. [Great applause.] And here I intend 
to stay until I die of old age or until they choose 
to hang me. I will never renounce my princi- 
ples." [Cheers.] Before I was confined in the 
jail, their officers were accustomed to visit the 
jail every day and offer them their liberty, if they 
would take the oath of allegiance to the South- 
ern confederacy and volunteer to go into the 
service, and they would guarantee them safety 
and protection. They were accustomed to vol- 
unteer a dozen at a time, so great was their 
horror of imprisonment and the bad treatment 
they received in thai miserable jail. After I 
got into the jail — and they had me in close 
confinement for three dreadful winter months — 
all this volunteering and taking the oath ceased, 
and the leaders swore I did it. [Great cheer- 
in r . | One of the brigadiers who was in com- 
mand I.!' the military post 'paid me a special 
visit, two of his aids accompanying him. He 
came in, bowed and scraped, saying : " Why, 
Brownlow, you ought nol to be in here.'' "But 
your generals," I replied, " have thought other- 
wise, and they have put me here." " I have 
come to infirm you that if you will take the 
oath of allegiance to tin' Southern confederacy, 
we will guarantee the protection and safety of 



yourself and family." Rising up several feet 
in my boots at that time, and looking him full 
j in the eye—" Why," said I, " I intend to lie 
here until I rot from disease, or die of old a^e, 
before I will take the oath of allegiance to your 
government. I deny your right to administer 
such an oath. I deny that you have any gov- 
ernment other than a Southern mob. You 
have never been recognised by any civilized 
Power on the face of the earth, and you will 
never be. [Applause.] I will see the South- 
ern confederacy, and you and I on top of it, in 
the infernal regions before I will do it." "Well," 
said he, " that's damned plain talk." [Laugh- 
ter and applause.] " Yes," I replied, " that is 
the way to talk in- revolutionary time3." [Ap- 
plause.] 

But I must hasten on. I will detain you too long. 
[Loud cries of "go on," "go on."] But, gentle- 
men and ladies, things went on. They tight- 
ened up ; they grew tighter, and still more tight. 
Many of our company became sick. We had 
to lie upon that miserable, coldj naked floor, 
with nbt room enough for us all to lie down at 
the same time — and you may think what it must 
have been in December and January — spelling 
each other, one lying down awhile on the floor 
and then another taking his place so made 
warm, and that was the way we managed un- 
til many became sick unto death. A number 
of the prisoners died of pneumonia aud typhoid 
fever, and other diseases contracted by expo- 
sure there. I shall never forget, while my head 
is above ground, the scenes I passed through 
in that jail. I recollect there were two venera- 
ble Baptist clergymen there — Mr. Pope and Mr. 
Cate. Mr. Cate was very low iudeed, prostra- 
ted from the fever and unable to eat the miser- 
able food sent there by the corrupt jailor and 
deputy marshal — a man whom I had denounced 
in my paper as guilty of forgery time and time 
again — a suitable representative of the thieves 
and scoundrels that head this rebellion in the 
South. [Applause.] The only favor they ex- 
tended to me was to allow my family to send 
me three meals a day by my son, who brought 
the provisions in a basket. I requested my 
wife to send also enough for the two old clergy- 
men. One of them was put iu jail for offering 
prayers for the President of the United $/<t!<s, 
and the other was confined for throwing up his 
hat and cheering the Stars aud Stripes as they 
passed his house, borne by a company of Union 
volunteers. When the basket of provisions 
came in, in the morning, they examined it at 
the door — would look between the pie and the 
bread to see if there was any billet or paper 
concealed there communicating treason from 
any outside Unionist to the old scoundrel they 
had in jail; and when the basket went out, 
a^ain the same ceremony was repeated, to dis- 
cover whether I had slipped any paper in, in 
any way. The old man Gate had three sons 
in jail. One of them, James Madison Cate, a 



most exemplary and worthy member of the 
Baptist church, who was there for having com- 
mitted no other crime than that of refusing to 
volunteer, lay stretched at length upon the floor, 
with one thickness of a piece of carpet under 
him and an old overcoat doubled up for a pil- 
low, in the very agonies of death, unable to 
turn over, only from one side to the other. His 
wife came to visit him, bringing her youngest 
child with her, which was but a babe, but they 
refuted her admittance. I put my head out of 
the jail window, and entreated them, for God's 
sake, to let the poor woman come in, as her 
husband was dying. They at last consented 
that she might see him for the limited time of 
fifteen minutes. As she came in and looked 
upon her husband's wan and emaciated face 
and saw how rapidly he was sinking, she gave 
evident signs of fainting, and would have fallen 
to the floor with the babe in her arms, had I 
not rushed up to her aud cried, " Let me have 
the babe," and then she sank down upon the 
breast of her dying husband, unable at first to 
speak a single word. I sat by and held the 
babe until the fifteen minutes had expired, 
when the officer came in, and in an insulting 
and peremptory manner notified her that the 
interview was to close. I hope I may never see 
such a scene again ; and yet such cases were 
common all over East Tennessee. Such ac- 
tions as these show the spirit of secession in 
the South. 

It is the spirit of murder and assassina- 
tion—it is the spirit of hell. And yet you have 
men at the North who sympathize with these 
infernal murderers. [Applause.] Jf I owed 
the devil a debt to be discharged, and it was to 
be discharged by the rendering up to him of a 
dozen of the meanest, most revolting and God- 
forsaken wretches that ever could be culled 
from the ranks of depraved human society, 
and I wanted to pay that debt and get a pre- 
mium upon the payment, I tvould make a 
tender to his Satanic Majesty of twelve North- 
ern men who sympathized with this infernal 
rebellion. [Great cheering.] Jf I am severe 
and bitter in my remarks — [Cries of "No, no ; 
not a bit of it"] — if I am, gentlemen, you must 
cousider that we in the South make a personal 
matter of this thing. [Laughter.] We have 
no respect or confidence in any Northern man 
who sympathizes with this infernal rebellion — 
[Cries of " good, good "] — nor should any be 
tolerated in walking Broadway at any time. 
Such men ought to be ridden upon a rail and 
ridden out of the North. [" Good, good."] They 
should either be for or against the " mill-dam ;" 
and I would make them show their hands. 
[Laughter aud applause.] Why, gentlemen, 
after the battle at Manassas and Bull Run the 
officers and privates of the Confederate army 
passed through our town on their way to Dixie, 
exulting over the victory they had achieved, 
and some of them had what they called Yankee 



heads, or the entire heads of Federal soldiers, 
some of them with long beards and goatees, 
by which they would take them up and say, 
" See ! here is the head of a damned soldier 
captured at Bull Run." That is the spirit of 
secession at the South. It is the spirit of 
murder of the vile untutored savage; it is the 
spirit of hell, and he who apologizes for them 
is no better than those who perpetrated the 
deed. [Cheers.] 

In Andy Johnson's town — [three cheers for 
Johnson were here given] — and while Johnson's 
name is on my lips, I will make another re- 
mark or two here : if Mr. Lincoln had consulted 
the Union men of Tennessee as to whom they 
wanted for military Governor of the State, to a 
man they would have responded Andy John- 
son. I have fought that man for twenty-five 
long and terrible years ; I fought him systemat- 
ically, perseveringly and untiringly ; but it was 
upon the old issues of whiggery and democracy; 
and now we will fight for one another. [Great 
cheering ] We have merged in Tennessee all 
other parties and predilections in this great 
question of the Union. [Cheers.] We are the 
Union men of Tennessee, unconditional Union 
men — [cheers] — and the miserable wretch who 
will attempt here or elsewhere to resurrect old 
exploded parties and party issues, and try to 
make capital out of this war, deserves the gal- 
lows, and deserves death. [Great applause.] 
In Andy Johnson's town they had the jail full 
of prisoners, drove his family out of his house, 
and his wife being in the last stages of con- 
sumption, appropriated his house, carpets and 
bedding, for a hospital, aud his wife had to take 
shelter with one of her daughters in an adjoin- 
ing county; and Johnson has in him to-night a 
devil as big — and there is in the bosom of 
every Union man in Tennessee — as my hat ; 
and whenever the federal army shall find its 
way there, we will shoot them down like dogs, 
and hang them on, every limb we come to. 
[Applause.] They have had their time of 
hanging and shooting, and our time comes 
next, and I hope to God that it will not be long. 
I am watching in the papers the movements of 
the army, and whenever I hear that my country 
is captured I intend to return posthaste and 
point out the rebels. [Cheers.] I have no other 
ambition on earth but to resurrect the Knox- 
ville Whig and get it in full blast, with one hun- 
dred thousand subscribers. [Cheers.] And then, 
as the negroes say down South, " I'll 'spress my 
opinion of some of them." [Great laughter.] But 
in the town of Greenville, where Andrew John- 
son resides, they took out of the jail atone time 
two innocent Union men, who had committed no 
offence on the face of the earth but that of 
being Union men — Nash and Fry. Fry was 
a poor*shoemaker, with a wife and half a dozen 
children. A fellow from way down East in 
Maine, by the name of JJaniel Leadbeater, the 
bloodiest and the most ultra man, the vilest 



wretch, the most unmitigated scoundrel that ever 
made a track in East Tennessee — this is Colonel 
Daniel Lead beater, late of the United States 
Army, hut now a rebel in the secession army — 
he took these two men, tied them with 
his own hands upon one limb, immediately over 
the railroad track in the town of Greenville, 
and ordered them to hang four days and nights, 
and directed all the engineers and conductors 
to go by that hanging concern slow, in a kind 
of snail gallop, up and down the road, to give 
the passengers an opportunity to kick the rigid 
bodies and strike them ivith a rattan. And 
they did it. I pledge you my honor that on the 
front platform they made a business of kicking 
the dead bodies as they passed by ; and the 
women — (I will not say the ladies, for down 
South we make a distinction between ladies and 
women) — the women, the wives and daughters 
of men in high position, waved their white 
handkerchiefs in triumph through the windows 
of the car at the sight of the two dead bodies 
hanging there. Leadbeat:r, for his murderous 
courage, was promoted by Jeff. Davis to the 
office of Brigadier General. He had an en- 
counter, as their own papers at Richmond state, 
at Bridgeport, not long ago, with a part of 
General Mitchell's army, where Leadbeater got 
a glorious whipping. His own party turned 
round and chastised him for cowardice. He 
had courage to hang innocent unarmed men 
taken out of jail, but he had not courage to 
face the Yankees and the Northern men that 
were under Mitchell and Buell. He took to his 
heels, like a coward and scavenger as he is. 
[Applause and cheers for General Mitchell.] 
Our programme is this: that when we get back 
into East Tennessee we will instruct all our 
friends everywhere to secure and apprehend 
this fellow, Leadbeater ; and our purpose is to 
take him to that tree and make the widow of 
Fry tie the rope around his infernal neck. 
[Cheers.] 

In the county of Knox,' where I reside, and 
only seven miles west of the town of Knoxviile, 
they caught up Union men, tied them upon logs, 
elevated the log upon blocks six or ten inches 
from the ground, put the men upon their breasts, 
tying their bands mid feet under the log, strip- 
ped their bucks entirely bare, and then, with 
Switches, cut their backs literally t > pieces, the 
blood running down at every stroke, 
came into court when it was in session, and 
when the case was stated, the Judge replied: 
"These are revolutionary times, and tli. -re is 
no remedy for anything of the kind." I! 
you si e, our remedy is in our own hands : and, 
with the help of guns, and swords, and sabres, 
we intend) God willing, to slay them when we 
get back th r ■, wh< rever we find them. | Cheers.] 
In the jail where I lay they were accustomed to 
drive up with a cart, with an ugly, rough, flat 

topped coffin upon it, surrounded by fifteen to 
forty meo, with bristling bayonets, as a guard 



to march in through the gate into the jail yard, 
with steady, military tread. We trembled in 
our boots, for they never notified us who was 
to be hanged, and you may imagine how your 
humble servant felt ; for if any man in that jail, 
under their law, deserved the gallows, I claim 
to have been the man. I knew it, and they 
knew it. They came sometimes with two cof- 
fins, one on each cart, and they took two men 
at a time and marched them out. A poor old 
man of sixty-five, and his son of twenty-five, 
were marched out at one time and handed on 
the same gallows. They made that poor old 
man, who was a Methodist class leader, sit by 
and see his son hang till he was dead, and thm 
they called him 'a damned Linconile Union 
shrieker, and said, " Come on; it is your turn 
next." He sank, but they propped him up and 
led him to the. halter, and swung both off on the 
same galloivs. They came, after that, for anoth- 
er man, and they took J. C. Haum out of jail — 
a young man of fine sense, good address, and of 
excellent character — a tall, spare-made man, 
leaving a wife at home, with four or five help- 
less children. My wife passed the farm of 
Hauni's the other day, when they drove her out 
of Tennessee and sent her on to New Jersey — 
I thauk them for doing so — and saw his wife 
ploughing, endeavoring to raise corn for her 
suffering and starving children. That is 
the spirit of secession, gentlemen. And yet 
you have a set of Godforsaken, unprincipled 
men at the North tcho are apologizing for 
them and sympathizing with them. [Applause] 
When they took Haum out and placed him 
on the scaffold they had a drunken chap- 
lain. They were kind enough to notify him 
an hour before the hanging that he was to 
hanjr. Haum at once made an application for 
;i M I'thodist preacher, a Union mau, to come 
and pray for" him. They denied him the priv- 
ilege, and said that God didn't hear any prayers 
in behalf of any damned Union shrieker, aud 
he had literally to die without the benefit of 
clergy. But they had near the gallows an un- 
principled, drunken chaplain of their own 
army, who got up and undertook to ap rtogize 
for Haum. He said : " This poor, unfortunate 
man, who is about to pay the debt of nature, 
eta the course he took. He said he was 
misled by the Union paper." Haum rose up, 
and with a clear, stentorian voice, said: " Fel- 
low-citizens, there is not a word of truth in 
that statement. I have authorized nobody to 
make such a statement. What I have said and 
done I have done and said with my eyes open, 
and, if it were to be done over, I would do it 
again. I am ready to hang, and you can ex- 
■ your purposes." He died lik" a man; 
he died like a Union man, like an East, l'en- 
nesseeau oujjht to die. As God is my judge, I 
would sooner be Haum in the grave today 
than anyone of the scoundrels concerned in 
his murder. [Great applause.] Time rolled on. 



; 



One event after another occurred, and finally a 
man of excellent character, one of And}- John- 
son's constituents from Greene county, by the 
name of Hessing Self, was condemned to be 
hung by this drumhead court-martial, and 
they were kind enough to let him know that he 
was to haug a few hours before the hour ap- 
pointed. His daughter, who had come down 
to administer to his comfort and consolation — 
a most estimable girl, about twenty-one years 
of age — Elizabeth Self, a tall, spare-made girl, 
modest, handsomely attired, begged leave to 
enter the jail to see her father. They per- 
mitted her, contrery to their usual custom and 
^heir savage barbarity, to go in. They had him 
W'i a small iron cage, a terrible affair; they 
opened a little door, and the jailor admitted 
her. A number of us went to witness the 
scene. As she entered the cage where her 
father was — who was to die at four o'clock that 
afternoon — she clasped him around the neck. 
and he embraced her also, throwing his arms 
across her shoulders. They sobbed and cried ; 
they shed their tears and made their moans. 1 
stood by, and I never beheld such a sight since 
God Almighty made me, and I hope I may 
never see the like again. When they had 
parted, wringing each other by the hand, s.\ 
she came out of the cage, stammering and 
trying to utter something intelligible, she lisped 
my name. She knew my face, and I could un- 
derstand as much as that she desired me to 
write a dispatch to Jeff. Davis, and sign her 
name, begging him to pardon her father. I 
wrote it about thus : 

Hon. Jefferson Davis (I did not believe 
the first word I wrote was the truth, but I put 
it there for the sake of form:) My father, Hess 
ing Self, is sentenced to be hanged at four 
o'clock to-day. 1 am living at home, and my 
mother is dead. My father is my earthly all ; 
upon him my hopes are centred, and, friend, 
I pray you to pardon him. Respectfully, 

ELIZABETH SELF. 
Jeff. Davis, who had a better heart than the 
rest of them, perhaps, immediately responded — 
for he could not withstand the appeals of a 
woman— to General Carroll, and told him not 
to hang that man Self, but to keep him in jail 
and let him atone for his crimes a certain 
time. Self has served his time out and has 
gone home, and that girl is saved the wretched- 
ness of being left, alone without a father. 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the spirit of 
secession all over the South ; it is the spirit that 
actuates them everywhere ; it is the spirit of 
murder ; it is the spirit of the infernal regions: 
and, in God's name, can you any longer excuse 
or apologize for such murderous and bloodthirsty- 
demons as live down in the Southern confeder- 
acy? [Loud cries of " No, no."] Hanging is 
going on all over East Tennessee. They shoot 
them down in the fields— they whip them ; and, I 
as strange as it may seem to you, in the coun-\ 



tics of Campbell and Anderson they actually 
lacerate with switches the bodies of females, 
wives and daughters of Union men— clever, re- 
spectable women. They show no quarter to 
male or female: they rob their houses and 
they throw them into prison. Oar jails are all 
full now, and we have complained and thought 
hard that our Government has not come to our 
relief, for a more loyal, a more devoted people 
to the Stars and Stripes never lived on the face 
of God's earth than the Union people of Ten- 
nessee. [Loud cheers.] With tears in their 
eyes they begged me, upon leaving East Ten- 
nessee, for God Almighty's sake to see the 
President, to see the army officers, so as to 
have relief sent to them and bring them out of 
jail. I hope, gentlemen, you will use your 
influence with the army and navy, and all con- 
cerned, to relieve these people. They are the 
most abused, down-trodden, persecuted and 
proscribed people that ever lived on the face of 
the earth. I am happy to announce to you that 
the rebellion will soon be played out. Thank 
God for his mercies, it will soon have been 
played out. [Cheers.J Richmond will be 
obliged to fall very soon, for that noble fellow, 
McClellan, will capture the whole of them. 
[Renewed applause.] I have confidence and 
faith in Fremont, and hope he may rush into 
East Tennessee. If Halleck, Buell & Co. — 
[great cheerim] — will only capture the region 
round about Corinth and take Memphis, the 
play is out and the dog is dead. [Laughter and 
cheers.] Then let us drive the leaders down 
into the Gulf of Mexico, like the devils drove 
the hogs into the sea of Galilee. [Laughter 
and applause.] 

But a few weeks prior to the last Presidential 
election they announced in their papers that 
the great bull of the whole disunion flock was 
to speak in Knoxville — a man, the first two let- 
ters of his name are W. L. Yancey — a fellow 
that the Governor of South Carolina pardoned 
out of the State prison for murdering his uncle, 
Dr. Earl. He was announced to speak, and 
the crowd was two to one Union men. I had 
never spoken to him in all my life. He called 
out in an insolent manner, " Is Parson Brown- 
low in this crowd?" The disunionists hallooed 
out, " Yes, he is here." " I hope," said he, 
" the Parson will have the nerve to come upon 
the staud and have me catechise him." " No," 
said the Breckinridge secessionists. Yes, gen- 
tlemen, we had four tickets in the field the last 
race — Lincoln and Hamlin, Bell and Everett — 
the Bell and Everett ticket was a kind of kan- 
garoo ticket, with all the strength in the legs ; 
[great laughter] — and there was a Douglas 
and Johnson and a Breckinridge and Lane 
ticket. As God is my judge, that was the mean- 
est and shabbiest ticket of the four that was in 
the field. Lincoln was elected fairly and 
squarely under the forms of law and the Con- 
stitution ; and though I was not a Lincoln man, 



s 



yet I gave in to the will of the majority, aud it 
is the duty of every patriot and true man to bow 
to the will of the majority. [Cheers. The 
Parson then resumed his story :] But the crowd 
hallooed to Yancey, " Brownlow is here, but he 
has not nerve enough to mount the stand where 
you are." I rose and marched up the steps 
and said, I will show you whether I have the 
nerve or not. "Sir," said he — and he is a beautiful 
speaker and personally a fine looking man — " are 
you the celebrated Parson Brownlow ? " "I 
am the only man on earth," I replied, " that 
fills the bill." [Laughter.] " Don't you think," 
said Yancey, " you are badly employed as a 
preacher, a man of your cloth to be dabbling 
in politics and meddling with State affairs ? " 
" No, sir," said I, "a distinguished member of 
the party you are acting with once took Jesus 
•Christ up upon a mount — [uproarious laugh- 
ter] — and said to the Saviour, ' Look at the king- 
doms of the world. All this will I give thee if 
thou wilt fall down and worship me.' Now, sir," 
I said, " his reply to the Devil is my reply to 
you, ' Get thee behind me, Satan.' " [Renewed 
laughter and applause.] I rather expected to 
be knocked down by him ; but I stood with my 
right side to him and a cocked Derringer in my 
breeches pocket. I intended, if I went off the 
scaffold, that he should go the other way. 
[Cheers.] "Now, sir," I said, "if you are 
through, I would like to make a few remarks." 
"Certainly, proceed," said Yancey. "Well, 
sir, you should tread lightly upon the toes of 
preachers, and you should get these disunion- 
ists to post you up before you launch out in 
this way against preachers. Are you aware, 
sir, that this old gray-headed man sitting here, 
Isaac Lewis, the President of the meeting, who 
has welcomed you, is an old disunion Metho- 
dist preacher, and Buchanan's pension agent in 



this town, who has been meddling in politics 
all his lifetime ? Sir," said I, " are you aware 
that this man, James D. Thomas, on my left, 
is a Breckinridge elector for this Congressional 
district? He was turned out of the Methodist 
ministry for whipping his wife and slandering 
his neighbors. Sir," said I, " are you aware 
that this young man sitting in front of us, Col- 
onel Loudon C. Haynes, the elector of the 
Breckinridge ticket for the State of Tennessee 
at large, was expelled from the Methodist min- 
istry for lying aud cheating his neighbor in a 
measure of corn? Now," said I, " for God's 
sake say nothing more about preachers until 
you know what sort of preachers are in your , 
own ranks." And thus ended the colloquy be- 
tween me and Yancey. I have never seen him 
since. Ladies and gentlemen, I have spoken 
much longer than I intended. 



TESTIMONY OF A BITTER OPPONENT. 

The Knoxville (Tenn.) Register, a secession 
Democratic paper, published in Browxlow's 
town, thus spoke of him, when opposing his 
release from imprisonment : 

" Brownlow has preached at every church and school- 
house, and made stump speeches at every cross-road, and 
knows every man, woman, and child, and their fath rs and 
grand lathers helbre them, in East Tennessee. As a cir- 
cuit preacher, a political stump-Bpeaker, a temperance ora- 
tor, and the editor of a newspaper, ho has been equally 
successful in our division of the State. let him but once 
reach the confines of Kentucky, with his fcnowle Ige of the 
geography and population of East Tennessee, aud OUI 
tion will 'soon feel the effect of bis hard bl iws. From 
amon" his own old partisan and reli^. I para' 

sites he will find men who will ohey him itical 

alacrity of those who followed Peter the Hermit in the 
first Crusade. AVe repeat, again, let us not underrate 
Brownlow." 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

BCAMMELL -t CO., PRINTERS, COR. OF SECOND * INDIANA AVENUE, THIRD FLOOR. 

1862. 



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